A/N: This is a companion of 'two lines meet'. They both cover the same event (that one's from Peggy's POV and this is Bucky's), and while it's not mandatory to read one or the other, I would recommend reading the other first.
Warnings for: violence, angst, flashbacks, some language, past canonical character death.
Title comes from 'Tessellate' by Ellie Goulding.
The target's name is Margaret Carter.
White female, brown hair, brown eyes. Average height, curvy. Age thirty-one. A manageable threat, but the Soldier's orders are to kill her swiftly. No noise - at least, no noise loud enough for her neighbors to hear through the thin walls. He can make no mistake tonight.
Despite that, he isn't nervous. His capacity for fear has been burned out of him, and the dark corners of his mind where doubts fester have been cauterized shut. He is focused on the mission and he is nothing else.
From the roof of the building next to hers, he watches the target as she walks up the street towards her apartment building. Sunset is not far off now, but the Winter Soldier can see her just fine through his binoculars. She walks with purpose, even though she is presumably on her way home for the night. She carries a briefcase and a small handbag, and as the Winter Soldier watches, she pauses for a brief word with an older lady coming down the sidewalk from the opposite direction. Margaret Carter smiles politely and nods at the woman, and the two separate a few seconds later. The Winter Soldier keeps watching.
Carter vanishes for a few minutes once she enters her apartment building. Her small apartment is on the third floor, and the Soldier shifts so that his line of sight is trained on the windows he knows to be hers. Through one of the windows, he sees the front door to her apartment open, a rectangle of light in the otherwise dark apartment. She closes the door behind her and all is dark for a solid minute, until she finally turns on the lights. Her posture is tense - wary. She scans the apartment with her eyes, and at one point she looks straight out the window he is staring in at her through - he is hidden too well to be seen, but for some reason the thought that she might somehow spot him makes his breathing turn shallow for a split second. The Winter Soldier finds himself abruptly thinking that perhaps a bit more caution is necessary on his part. Margaret Carter seems . . . perceptive. Sharp. Dangerous.
He watches, hidden in the shadows on the roof of the other building, as she goes about her business. She cooks dinner alone, just barely visible in the kitchen from the Winter Soldier's position. She fiddles with a small radio briefly, her curvy hips cocked slightly as she stands at the stove (as she sways ever so slightly to a beat he can't hear, the Winter Soldier finds himself inexplicably struck by a vague sense of déjà vu.) Every so often she'll glance around, her brow furrowing briefly before she seems to shake off whatever she's feeling and go back to the task at hand. The Winter Soldier patiently waits while she eats, then washes her plate, then makes herself a cup of tea and steps out of his line of sight.
Carter reappears about thirty minutes later, crossing in front of a window on her way to her bedroom. She disappears into the bathroom for another half-hour, and emerges dripping and wrapped in a white towel. She drops the towel as she fetches her clothes, and the Winter Soldier has the sudden urge to look away, as if he's a naughty boy peeking into places he shouldn't be. But he isn't a child, and he's seen plenty of naked people before - what makes Margaret Carter any different?
Nothing. She's a target. For whatever reason, she will be dead before dawn tomorrow. The Winter Soldier does not allow himself an emotional response to that thought.
She goes to bed not long after that, and now the Winter Soldier must get ready. He checks all of his weapons to make sure they're in the proper place. He puts on his mask, and for some reason his hands linger at his face for just a second longer than necessary, hesitating. But then he shifts slightly, and moonlight glints off of his metal arm, and he remembers what he has to do. The plan weighs heavy in his mind, his thoughts turning slow and muddy. He chalks it up to an adrenaline rush, but he can practically taste his own nervousness. It's slight, but it's there.
He gives the target a little while longer to fall into a deep sleep, and then he goes down to the street below. He could have easily made the leap from the roof to the fire escape outside of Margaret Carter's apartment, but he'd tested it earlier in the day - the metal landing would have made such a racket that he'd be announcing his presence to the entire building. Instead he climbs slowly and carefully, and makes it up to the third floor silently, a predator closing in on sleeping prey. He feels vaguely unsettled by that idea, and he pauses a second before opening Margaret Carter's bedroom window, sternly telling himself to get it the fuck together. Hesitance is not acceptable, and he knows that. He knows that very well.
The window opens smoothly, as he'd known it would - he'd greased it earlier, once Margaret had left for the day. He slides in through the open window with ease, and lands on his feet inside the bedroom with a barely audible thump. The room is silent except for the sound of the target's breathing. The Winter Soldier leaves the window open in the off chance he needs to make a quick exit, and slowly approaches Carter's bed, keeping to the shadows along the walls. He steps neatly over a pair of shoes which have been left next to her small wardrobe - heels, he notes absently. Red heels. The Winter Soldier has only just stepped over them when he hears a soft intake of breath - it would have been inaudible to anyone else, but to him it signals that the target is awake.
He doesn't have time to waste now. She's definitely awake - he can tell by the way her body has tensed ever so slightly under her sheets - and that means she will see him coming if given the opportunity to look for him. The target will most likely scream and attempt to run, and that is not how this mission is supposed to go. The Winter Soldier must act quickly and lethally. Luckily, that's what he's good for.
He lunges at the target, diving across the small bed and putting his metal hand over her mouth. She doesn't scream - instead, she thrashes wildly, viciously. Her fingers, red-nailed and deceptively strong, catch him by the hair and pull violently, and he grabs her arm and squeezes until a bone fractures with a quiet snap. She does scream then, her face contorting, but the sound of her pain is muffled sufficiently by his hand. Now he can finish the job.
Manual strangulation is not his preferred method, although he is more than strong enough to complete the task. If he'd been given the choice, he would have slit Carter's throat as she slept. However, he doesn't get to make that choice. He watches with single-minded focus as the target struggles, wheezing, unable to get enough air to speak, let alone scream. Her throat is delicate under his fingers, but her tenacity is admirable. For some reason, it's almost - familiar.
The fire in her eyes has yet to go out, even as he starves it of oxygen. He's seen that fire before.
He doesn't see her reaching for the bedside table, and doesn't register the picture frame coming until it slams into the side of his head. She's thrown all her weight behind it, and it dazes him for a split second - but that short span of time is enough for her to get loose and reach for her bedside table, her focus making it evident that she has something hidden away, presumably a knife or gun. He tackles her without hesitation, knocking her to the floor next to the bed. He crashes down on top of her and still, she does not scream for help. She's like a wildcat, all clawing fingers and bared teeth, and for a moment he pities her. He almost hopes she will faint or give up, just so that she won't die like this, desperate and practically snarling at him, but ultimately too weak to fend him off.
But despite his thoughts, his body is moving purely out of habit - he punches her ruthlessly, no doubt seriously hurting her, but she still doesn't give in. She tries to kick him between the legs, and he jerks away from the blow before he can sustain injury. Margaret Carter's brown eyes meet his for an instant and the strangest thing occurs to him - just one word, Peggy - and then she hits him with the picture frame again. The subject of the picture flashes across his field of vision and his blood runs strangely cold.
The picture frame falls to the ground, dripping shards of glass, but the Winter Soldier does not move as Margaret - Peggy, he thinks and then, Agent Carter? - scrambles to reach her bedside table. The man in the picture is scrawny and grave, and the Winter Soldier finds him suddenly, almost blindingly, familiar. The Soldier only snaps into action when he sees Carter's uninjured arm rise, the muscles of her forearm tensing as she prepares to fire her handgun. He knocks the gun away from her with practiced ease, although she does manage to fire one shot into the air before she loses her grip. No, he thinks, no noise.
"Let go of me, you son of a bitch. Let me go!" she snarls as he pins her to the floor again, and he recognizes her accent immediately. English, with a tone and inflection that indicates good breeding and education. A classy voice (under other circumstances) for a classy dame.
That thought, the notion somehow both foreign and familiar all at once, sends a spike of unusual panic through him. He has to silence her, to keep her from speaking and confusing him even further - he has to stop her from making any more noise before this mission is shot all to hell. He doesn't think, he just moves - he grabs her by the neck and easily, as if she weighs nothing at all, he slams her skull against the unforgiving floor.
She goes limp immediately, but the raspy noise of her breathing tells him she is still alive. He just sits there for a moment, willing his heart rate to slow so that he can just get this over with and leave. The Winter Soldier realizes he's still clutching Peggy's neck (when did she become Peggy? Who is Peggy?), his fingers tangled in her soft brown hair, and when he pulls his hand back, blood from the back of her head stains the gleaming metal tips of his fingers.
It's with his metal hand that he slowly reaches out and picks up the picture. Blood smears onto the metal frame, but none gets on the photograph itself. The Winter Soldier handles it with strange care as he stares, transfixed, at the boy in the picture. He's being foolish, he knows, and his instincts are screaming - kill her, snap her neck and get out - but he can't move. He's rigid, and something at the back of his mind is itching, like a scab that he'll scratch and scratch until the wound bleeds all over again -
agent carter said that the -
who?
agent carter. she works for the SSR. best one of the whole bunch, if you ask me. i'll introduce you when we make it back.
why're you blushing? you made it with this girl, didn't you!
no! i wouldn't - it's not like that. she's special.
special to you in particular, or just special?
i've got it bad for her, buck.
The memory makes little sense, and it comes back in disjointed fragments, but it's there all the same. The Winter Soldier can remember that voice, distantly, and the shy smile that had accompanied it. He doesn't know how or why, but he remembers it.
He looks over at the target - Margaret Carter? Agent Carter? Peggy? - and he sucks in a breath, sudden and surprised. She's very beautiful, even like this - bedraggled and beaten and unconscious. It's suddenly not hard to imagine someone - the man in the picture, maybe - loving her, being absolutely crazy about her. The Winter Soldier doesn't know why he's entertaining the thought at all, but he is.
He looks back at the picture again, reaching, trying to find any more whispers in the back of his head. They're there, but it's like trying to catch fish with his bare hands - they slip away as soon as he grabs at them, and disappear into the recesses of his mind, buried under blackness and emptiness. His mind has been poured out and corrected and put back many times, and everything is jumbled and hidden but it's still there, and he can't reach it.
"Hey," the target suddenly rasps, and the Winter Soldier's attention snaps to her immediately. She's pale and exhausted, but she's conscious again, and her expression is cold and hard. Her voice makes more of those whispers rise to the surface of his mind, hard to ignore. "If you let me live -,"
"Shut up," he says without thinking, silencing her and calming his scattered mind. He just needs to know one thing, he tells himself, and then he'll finish her off. "Who is this?"
Carter stares at him for a second, and then she says, "His name was Steve. Steve Rogers." Her eyes gleam with sudden tears. His name was Steve. Was.
He needs to get a better look at her, this beautiful woman crying over a lost - what? Lover? Husband? The memory eludes him. The Soldier reaches out - too quickly, judging by her slight flinch - and grabs her face, tilting it so that he can look into her eyes. They're big and brown and familiar. He thinks he remembers looking into them some time ago, in warmer lighting - and her hair had been curled, and her lips had been painted red and -
He has to end this now. This is what being compromised feels like.
"If you're going to kill me, you bloody well ought to get it over with," she says, fearless and proud, and strangely enough, that's how he realizes that he can't do it.
He releases her and stands quickly, leaving both her and the picture - Steve, she'd said, his name was Steve - on the floor. She stares up at him, gaze icy, and after a moment she turns her head to the side, her gaze on the picture frame where it rests a few feet away. The Winter Soldier lingers for a few moments, some part of him he hadn't realized even existed warring against his instincts, refusing to allow him to pull out his handgun and put a bullet in her.
He can't kill her.
it's not like that. she's special.
Those words keep echoing in the Winter Soldier's head as he crosses the room on silent feet and slips out the window and into the night. Carter doesn't call after him, and he doesn't wait around for her to call for help or retrieve her gun. He does the only thing he knows to do in that moment - he goes back to his handlers. Maybe they'll send someone else in his stead when the time is right to try again - someone new. Someone who will not be compromised by Peggy Carter's eyes and her whispers of a dead man's name.
When he returns to his handlers, they immediately give the order for him to be wiped. He's not surprised - he wouldn't have expected anything else. It's better this way, he knows. This way he cannot be compromised by these strange thoughts and feelings ever again.
It's as he's being prepped that another bit comes to him, another fragment of thought from the darkest corners of his mind. The Winter Soldier closes his eyes and remembers it as if it's from someone else (perhaps it is - he can't say for sure) but he remembers her - Carter - and the man from the picture, and they'd been talking in a room with warm, low lighting. She'd been radiant in red, and the Winter Soldier vaguely remembers wanting to dance with her. But no, Peggy had said, with eyes only for the man from the photograph. She'd been waiting.
Waiting for what, he can't recall.